he that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much nor can that possibly be spoken to no purpose which came from the mouth of thy Truth If ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous Mammon who will commit to your trust true riches and if ye have not been faithful in that which is another mans who shall give you that which is your own He then such a man as I haue described adjoyned himself to me and with me laboured in the same uncertainty of what course of life were fittest to be prosecuted by us Nebridius likewise leaving * his own Country not farre from the principal City Carthage and * Carthage also it self where his residence most usually was leaving his Fathers Lands and his House an excellent seat and his Mother desolate who would not follow his travels as mine did He also came to Millain for no other cause but to live and joyn with me in the same zealous quest after Verity and Wisdom and such likewise was his suspiring such his fluctuation an ardent Inquisitor after a beatifical life and an acute Discusser of the most difficult questions And here now were the famished mouths of three necessitous persons breathing their spiritual poverty and wants one to another gasping towards and waiting on thee until thou shouldest give them their meat in due season Psal 145.15 And in that bitterness and anguish of spirit which by thy great mercy followed our secular employments when we examined the end why we should suffer such ungrateful labours we discovered nothing but darkness and we turned away our faces with grief and said How long will this be and this we often said yet saying so did not leave such things because there appeared elsewhere nothing certain to which these forsaken we might confidently adhere CHAP. XI S. Austin's reasoning with himself concerning his past and present condition and the disposal of his future life the misery he apprehended to be in a single life AND I wondered extremely when I considered what a long time it was since the nineteenth year of my age when I began first to be enflamed with the pursuite of Wisdom resolving upon discovery thereof to quit all other empty hopes and deceiving frenzies of vanishing desires and now behold me thirty years old still sticking in the same mire covetous after the fruition of things * present * drawing me hither and thither and * then flying from me whilst I said to my self To morrow I shall find it out it will clearly discover it self and I shall embrace it and Behold Faustus will come and will expound all to me O wise Academicks then said I in whose opinion there is nothing certainly knowable for the regulating of humane life Nay said I then But let us not despair but more diligently search on Behold there are not those absurdities in the Ecclesiastical Books that we imagined but they may be otherwise and rationally interpreted Finally let me remain in those notions of Religion wherein my childhood was instructed by my parents till clear truth be found out But where or when shall we seek it Ambrose is not at leisure nor have we the leisure to read books Where shall we seek these books with what or in what time procure them upon whose recommendations take them Nay but let us set some times apart let us contribute some certain houres for the salvation of our soul Great hope appears the Church Catholick teacheth not what we thought and whereof vainly we accused her Her learned condemn it as blasphemous to think God terminated with an humane shape and doubt we to knock that the rest may be opened My Schollars employ my forenoon houres for the rest of my time what do I why not do this But when then visit our greater friends whose favours we must use when prepare the matter we sell to our Schollars and when repair our spirits in relaxing our mind from this intention of cares Perish all and let these vain and empty solicitudes be dismissed and let us now set our selves only to this inquisition of truth The life we live is wretched death uncertain if it should suddenly seize on us in what a case go we hence and where ever shall we learn what here neglect or more shall not this our neglect then be punished But yet what if death deprive the soul of all its sense and its cares together Then is this also worthy to be sought out But God forbid it should be so Sure 't is no vain no empty matter that the authority of the Christian faith should thus o're spread all the world with so great pre-eminence and renown and surely the divine hand would not have operated so great things for us if together with the death of the body were also wasted and extinguish'd the life of the soul Why delay we then the hopes of the present age forsaken to give up our selves wholly to the search of God and happiness But deferre a while these things are also pleasant and have in them no little sweetness Let us not call off our intentions from them too hastily because after this done it will be dishonourable to return to them see how little we want of acquiring some place of honour in the world and this obtained we may then set up our rest Great store of friends we have very potent if nothing else be got and our hast will not stay for a better place yet we may soon attain a Presidentship And then a Wife also must be gotten with a reasonable dowry that she may not be a charge And here shall my secular desires take up Many great and imitable persons have bestowed themselves in the study of wisdom being married Whilst I discoursed such things and these contrary winds drove my heart to and fro the times ran on and I foreslowed to be converted to the Lord God and deferred from day to day to live in thee though I deferred not daily more and more to die in my self In love with a beatifical life yet I feared to find it where it was and sought after it by flying from it For I thought I should be in too wretched a condition if deprived of the embraces of a woman and I imagined not the medicines of thy mercy to cure this infirmity because I had not tryed them and supposed continency an effect of our own ability in which I found mine too weak For I was so uninstructed that I knew it not to be written Wisd 8.21 vulg That none is continent but from thy gift But that thou wouldest give it if I did with hearty sighs and groanes knock at thy eares and with a solid faith cast upon thee my cares CHAP. XII The disputes between Him and Alipius most chastly disposed concerning marriage and single life INdeed Alipius much disswaded me from marrying alledging we could no way with any secure leisure attend upon our long purposed search of Wisdom if I ran this
baptized IN those years likewise when first I began to teach in the Town where I was born I had a friend grown by the society of our studies too too dear unto me my co-aâ—â—anean co-flourishing with me in the fresh blossom of youth With me he had sprung up from a child and we had been alwaies school-fellows and play-fellows together Yet was he not then by me so accounted a friend as afterwards nor indeed was he so afterward according to the rule of true friendship because that only is true amity which thou joynest betwixt such parties as first co-here in thee by the glew of that love which is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost Rom. 5.5 which is given unto us But yet too too sweet was that our amity being long backed and concocted by the equal hear of the same studies pursued by us both For I had also already bended him from the true faith which his youth had not so strongly and deeply comprehended to those fables so superstitious and pernicious for which my poor Mother deplored me And now that man strayed in his judgment together with me nor could my soul mind ought without him And Lo Thou pursuing close upon the backs of us thy fugitives God of revenges and at the same time fountain of mercies who re-convertest unto thee by wonderful waies Lo thou tookest away that man out of this World when he had scarce compleated a year in that my friendship so sweet unto me beyond all the sweetnesses of that my life Who can enumerate thy praises Who those which he hath experienced in himself alone What was it thou didst at that time O my God And how uninvestigable is the Abyss of thy judgments For falling sick of a burning-fever he hapned to lie long time in a mortal sweat without all sense And his recovery then despaired-of he was unknowing it baptized whilst I much mattered it not and presumed that he would sooner retain those signatures I had imprinted on his soul than those which he inscient were received upon his body When far otherwise it proved for he was suddenly refreshed upon it and made †Or recovered of that fit whole And I presently as soon as I could speak with him which was so soon as he could answer me for I departed not from him who too intimately depended on each other began to scoff to him as to one likewise that would deride with me the baptism which he had received when he was so much absented at that instant both in understanding and senses though he had been acquainted after that he had received it But he looked upon me with the same horror as it had been on an enemy and with a wonderful and suddenly-assumed freedom advised me that if I meant to continue a friend I should desist to speak to him on that manner And I though perplexed and amazed thereat yet deferred my passion till his recovery and till the strength of his health were capable of my agitating with him what I thought fit But he ravished from my folly that with Thee he might be preserved for my consolation after a few daies in my absence was re-seized by his Fever and died With what agony was then my heart darkned And whatever I looked on had the face of death upon it Even my Country was a banishment to me and my Fathers house a wonderful affliction And what ever sweet thoughts I had communicated with him turned now unto me being without him into a most bitter torment Mine eyes every where sought him and he was not restored unto me and all places were hated by me because they had him not Neither could they now answer me Behold he will come shortly as it was before in his life time Psal 42.11 when he was absent And I became unto my self a great astonishment and I asked of my soul Why she was so sad why so disquieted within me Nor knew she what to answer me And if I said Trust in God she most justly did not obey me Because a farr truer and better thing that man was whom so dear to her she had lost than that phantasm of God on which she was bidden yet to repose her hope Of all things weeping only was left pleasant to me and this alone had succeeded my Friend in the dearest place of my affection CHAP. V. Why Mourning so pleasant to the afflicted ANd now O Lord those storms are long since blow over and time hath healed up that wound O might I learn from thee who art the truth and thy mouth applied to the ear of my heart wouldst thou tell me why are tears so sweet to the afflicted art thou who art every where present yet as it were then retired from our miseries dwelling alwayes in thy contented self whilst we are varied in much wofull experience in which yet if we might not bemoan our selves in those thy passion-less ears the lost spark of our hope would be extinguished From whence then is so lushious a fruit cropped out of the very bitterness of life as that of groaning and weeping sighing and bemoaning our selves is * Is that the sweetness of it that we hope thou hearest it T is so truly in our prayers for that they have an earnest desire of access unto thee But may it be so said too concerning that grief and mourning for a thing utterly lost wherewith I was then overwhelmed For neither conceived I any hopes to revive him nor petitioned I this with my tears but only wept and lamented my loss as desolate and bereft of all my joyes Or * is weeping it self indeed a bitter thing and only in a fastidiousness of things before enjoyed whilst we abhorr all those former sweets this bitternesse delights us CHAP. VI. His wounded soul for his deceased Friend not finding any consolation BUt why do I speak of these things For this is not a time now of questioning but of confessing unto thee Miserable then I was and miserable is every soul fettered with the love of mortal things and racked asunder it is when it loseth them and then resents the infelicity by which it was equally miserable before it lost them So was I at that time and mourned most bitterly and in that bitterness placed my repose Such a wretch I was and I accounted dearer to me even than that my Friend this my so wretched life For although fain I would have changed it yet was I unwilling to have lost it any more than him and I know not whether unwilling to have lost it even for him As 't is storied of Orestes and Pylades if it be not a fiction that they strove to dye * for each other or at least * together to whom not to live together was a thing worse than death But there ruled in me I know not what passion quite contrary to this Both the tediousness of living was most afflicting to me and the fear of death I think
because the more I loved him the more I abhorred and dreaded that my cruellest Enemy Death that bereaved me of him fancying it a monster that would soon devour the rest of men because it could destroy him Even thus I well remember stood I then affected Behold my heart O my God Behold and see into me how I remember this very well O thou my hope that now cleansest me from the impurity of such passions guiding my eyes unto thy beauties and plucking my feet out of these snares For I wondred much that the rest of mortals could any longer live when he whom I loved as a thing immortall was now dead And yet more wondred that my self being only another He could live when he was gone Well said one of his friends Animae dimidium mea Half of my soul for I deemed his and mine to be but one soul as it were in different bodies And therefore my life was an horror to me who would not live thus an Half and death yet a greater affright to me lest he should perish all whom I so passionately loved ‖ S. Austin reviewing this work in his Retractations 2. l. 6. c. censures this expression quasi declamatio levis potius quam gravis confessio CHAP. VII He forsakes the place of their acquaintance and goes to Carthage O Fond madness that knows not how to love men men-like O sottish man so impatiently taking to heart accidents only humane such as poor I then was Therefore I stormed and sighed and wept and was distracted bereft both of content and counsel For I carried about a soul all lacerated and gored in blood and impatient longer to be carried by me and where to repose it I found not Not in delightsome groves nor in playes and musick not in fragant odors nor in exquisit banquets not in the pleasures of the chamber or of the bed not in books or poesie took it any rest All things looked gastly even the day And whatever it was that was not He importune it was and loathsome except mourning and tears and in these only it found some small content And when at any time I retired my soul from these I was re-surcharged with the grievous burden of my misery which was only to be lightened by thee O Lord only by thee to be removed And I knew this but yet was so much the less either willing or able to find remedy because thou then to me wast no solid or stable thing when my despairing thoughts fled for support unto thee For it was not thou but an empty Phantasm and my own errour that was my God whereon assaying â—o place my soul that it might find some stay through this inanity it still relapsed and again came rouling back upon me And my self remained the alone unhappy place to my self where I could neither be nor be from thence For whether could my heart from my heart fly away where could I avoid my self and where would not my self follow me And yet farr from my Country I fled for my eyes less missed him where they were not used to see him And thus forsaking Tagaste I went to Carthage CHAP. VIII His wound eured by time and new Friendships TImes do not lose time nor idly rowle away by these our senses but in the mind produce strange operations Behold they came and went day by day and in coming and passing they insinuated into me other images and other remembrances and by degrees repaired me with my formerly known delights to which that my grief at length gave place But there succeeded though no new sorrowes yet the causes only of more sorrowes For whence did that my last grief so easily and so deeply wound me but because I had spilt my soul upon a bed of sand and loved a mortal as if he could not die And that which recovered and repaired me of this were but like solaces of other mortal friends with whom I loved something which was not loved for thee even those fabulous delusions †Manicheisme and long-spun lies by the adulterous touches whereof our lascivient minds through our itching ears became still more defiled Nor did these delusions perish to me when my friends did Besides which there were also many other things cementing together our affections To chat and laugh together civil obsequiousnesse and mutuall compliance together to read merry books to jest together and together be solemn to dissent from one another sometimes without offence and as a Man would do from himself and by this disagreeing in some very few things to season and rellish the more our consentments in the rest to teach one another somewhat or somewhat to learn to expect those absent with impatience embrace their returns with joy It being usual by these and the like expresses and emanations from hearts continually reflecting interchanged loves through the countenance through the tongue through the eyes and through a thousand other charming motions as it were by so much fuell heaped on these fires to melt down souls and to cast many of them into one CHAP. IX Yet these too failing him ANd this is it that is loved in a friend and so loved that the conscience is self-accused in any who continues not to love him who loves him again or who loves not that man again who loves him first requiring nothing from his body but only demonstrations of his affection And for this are those mournings if one dies and nights of sorrowes and a languishing heart having all its sweets converted into bitterness and from the dear loss of the life of those who are dead even the death of those alive But alway-blessed he who loves * thee and in thee * his friend and for thee * his Eenmy For he alone loseth nothing dear to whom all are dear only in him whom he never loseth And who is this neverlost but our God the God that made and filleth Heaven and Earth Jer. 23.24 Ps 119.142 Jo. 17.71 and that even by filling them made them Thee none loseth but who leaveth and who so leaveth thee whither goeth he or whither doth he flie but from thee gracious back again to thee offended For in what place finds he not the presence of thy law in his punishment And thy law is truth and Truth is thy self CHAP. X. All things loved besides God pass away and leave the lover to embrace sorrowes Ps 80.19 TVrn us unto thee O God of power shew us the beauty of thy countenance and we shall be whole For which way soever the soul of man turns it self it is consigned unto sorrowes unless only toward thee yea though it seize upon all those other beauties that are out of it self and out of thee which yet could be none at all unless they were from thee All which have their rise and their setting their spring and their fall and in their springing they begin as it were to be and then grow on to attain perfection perfected
tooth-ach after he was rendered thereby speechless Cap. 4 His acquainting S. Ambrose by letters with his former errours and present resolutions desiring his advice what part of Scripture chiefly he should read who directeth him to Isaiah Cap. 5 His return to Millain the Easter following to receive Baptisme from Bishop Ambrose together with his Son Adeodate and Alipius who travelled thither barefoot S. Austin's ravishment and melting into teares upon hearing the Church-service and musick Cap. 6 The Original of singing the Church-Psalmes and Hymnes at Millain after the manner of the Eastern Churches The bodies of the Martyrs Gervasius and Protasius discovered to S. Ambrose by divine revelation Found uncorrupted Many miracles done by them whereby the fury of the Arrian Emperess towards S. Ambrose and the Catholicks was much lenified Cap. 7 S. Austin's return by Rome for Africk The death of his Mother in Italy at Ostia A description of her pious education and life Cap. 8 Her dutiful deportment toward and at last conversion of her Husband Patricius to profess the Christian faith Cap. 9 The discourses between him and his Mother at Ostia some few dayes before her sickness concerning the felicities of the next life Her desire of death Cap. 10 Her Sickness Death careless of her Funeral only desiring from them a remembrance of her at the Altar of the Lord. Cap. 11 S. Austin refraining from weeping though suffering much inward grief to which after her burial he indulgeth some tears Cap. 12 His Prayer for his deceased Mother Monica and Father Patricius Cap. 13 LIB X. IN this Book S. Austin makes confession of the several lapses and infirmities of his present condition since his regeneration by Baptisme Cap. 1 The end and fruit of confessing his present condition mentally to God Cap. 2 The end and fruit of his confessing his present condition publickly before men Cap. 3 Yet not able to see or confess all of himself which God seeth in him Cap. 5 Description of his present condition in the state of Grace That he now truly loveth God Concerning whom he proceeds to examine what it is he loveth when he saith that he loveth God That it is * no object of sense * no part of the visible world abroad * no part or faculty within himself Cap. 6 Neither the Vegetative nor yet the Sensitive Cap. 7 Nor yet the more interiour and most admirabl◠faculty of the Memory The many wonders of which to the great glory of the maker thereof he most subtilly discourseth unto the 26th Chapter Cap. 8 c. That God whom he loves is* something within but yet above his soul * not confined by place omnipresent c. Cap. 26 That though he now truly loveth God abstracted from and far above all other creatures and also above himself Cap. 27 Yet he enjoyeth not as yet a perfect union unto him but hath a perpetual combat with many other false joys and griefs and fears Cap. 28 Not having yet a perfect continency in respect of all other objects besides God but extending some undue attention and affection unto them Cap. 29 He examineth himself and confesseth his present infirmities in the severall branches of Concupiscence 1 John 2.16 1. The lust of the flesh 2. The lust of the eyes 3. The pride of life And here he confesseth 1. His remaining infirmities concerning the temptations of the lust of the flesh And amongst these 1. Concerning the temptations of the Touch relating to carnall concubinage Cap. 30 2. Concerning the temptations of the tast in eating and drinking Cap. 31 3. Concerning the temptations of the smell in sweet odours and perfumes Cap. 32 4. Concerning the temptations of the ears in Musick Where whether Musick be useful in Churches Cap. 33 5. Concerning the temptations of the eyes in splendid fair and well proportioned objects Cap. 34 2. His remaining infirmities concerning the temptations of the lust of the eyes or curiosity of vain science Cap. 35 3. His remaining infirmities concerning the temptations of the pride of life The great danger of vain-glorying △ incurred from the approbation and praise of men Cap. 36 Which is not avoidable to well-doing Cap. 37 △ Incurred also from the contemning of Praise as this also being a thing praise-worthy Cap. 38 △ Incurred also from self-love and self-conceit without regard to praise of others Cap. 39 A recapitulation of the things formerly spoken in this Book· S. Austin's sometimes extraordinary transportments in the contemplation and love of God Cap. 40 41 His recourse for a remedy to all these his maladies not * to evil Angels or Demons with the Platonists or others practising evil Arts as Mediatours between God and man because sinners like men spirits like God Cap. 42 But * to Christ who is the only true Mediatour mortal like man righteous like God through whom else desperate he confidently hopes a perfect cure of all his diseases Cap. 43 The end and purpose of these his Confessions Cap. 44 THE CONFESSIONS OF S. Augustine DECLARING The Story of his Life LIB I. CHAP. I. Cap. 1 Invocation and praise of God so great so incomprehensible and yet so near and intimate to his creatures and requiring of man so vile a thing by sin to love to invocate to praise and to confess unto Him This in the five Chapters following GReat art thou O Lord and exceedingly to be praised Psal 145.3 147.5 great is thy power and thy wisdom is infinite And yet man presumes to praise thee being a piece of thy Creation poor man that bears about him now Mortality that bears about this sad Remembrancer of his sin and this inherent witnesse that thou O God resistest the proud Jam. 4.6 Yet man desires to praise thee as a piece of thy Creation And this his delight to praise thee also floweth from thee because Thou madest him for thee and his heart is restlesse until it repose in Thee Teach me therefore now O Lord this my duty towards Thee And which ought to precede That to call upon Thee or that to give praise unto Thee And again which is first To know thee or to call upon Thee But who is he that calls upon Thee and doth not first know thee for so he may addresse his prayers to something else instead of thee And yet call we not also upon thee that thou wouldest vouchsafe to let us know thee Rom. 10.14 Psal 22.26 Mat. 7.7 But again 't is said How shall they call on him on whom they have not believed And how shall they believe without a Preacher And They shall praise the Lord that first seek after him For they that seek shall finde him And they that finde shall praise Him Let me then first seek thee O Lord by calling upon thee and call upon thee from believing in thee because unto us also hast thou been preached My faith therefore now calleth upon Thee O Lord thy gift which thou hast inspired into me by the
good time thou wilt return and pitty me And what is it I would first utter unto thee O Lord my God but that my silliness cannot tell how or whence I first came hither into this dying life shall I call it or living death I cannot tell And behold then immediatly the comforts of thy compassionating mercies * attended me as I have been told by the Parents of my flesh out of whose substance thou fashionedst me in thy good appointed time long before the dawning of this my memory and * cherished that my helpless age with the soft nourishment of a Womans milk Neither was it the Providence of my Mother or Nurses that stored their swelling breasts therewith but thou it was that in those Cisterns preparedst an agreeable food for that my tender age according to thinâ— ordinance and the riches of thy bounty descending to the meanest Original of things And thou gavest also * to me to desire that only which thou then gavest me and also * to those who nursed me as willingly to bestow on me what thou didst first bestow on them For they by a heavenly-guided affection took a delight to impart unto me what they abounded with from thee and it was also good for them that I received this good from them which indeed was not from but by them only for from thee O God are all good things Psal 62.1 and from my God cometh my universal salvation as I have well-learned since by the multiplyed expressions of so many blessings heaped upon me internal and external all confessing thee their Author For then I had only the skill how to suck to be still when my flesh was satisfyed and to cry when it was offended and nothing more than this But afterward came-on smiles and laughter first when I was asleep then when awake for this hath been told me of my self and I likewise discover it in the infancy of others though I remember it not in mine own Hence by gentle degrees I advanced to perceive and discern where I was and to have a desire to make known my desires to those that might content them But this in vain at first these longings of mine being * shut up within me and they * without me unable with the eye of sense to pierce so deep into my soul Therefore next I laboured to produce and expose my meaning by several motions of my fluttering limbs and ejaculations of broken words * some few such as I could articulate and bearing * litle resemblance to my mental conceits And when I was not presently obeyed eithâ—r for that my desires were hurtfull or not intelligible I would fall into a ridiculous rage against my Elders not under my power and my betters not owing me service I would take revenge on them with crying Such have I heard other In ants to be and such my Nurses and Tenders report me to have been by those dark conjectures they could make of my infantine inclinations And now behold mine infancy is deceased long ago and notwithstanding I still alive But tell me O Lord thou who livest all ages yet without the defluxe of any because before the first dawn of time and before all that can be said to be before Thou art and art the God and Lord of all which thy self hath created and before thy eye do stand ever-fixed the causes of all the heremost-fleeting events and remain unchangeable the Ideas and patterns of all things here most floating and before thee live eternall the reasons of all things temporall which so often to us seem unreasonable Tell unto me O God thy poor suppliant thou that art mercifull unto me who am miserable tell me whether this my infancy succeeded not also a younger age of mine expired before it that life perchance the revolution of which I passed yet being a prisoner within my Mothers womb for of my abode there also I have understood and seen many Women bear about the like burdens And what before that life again O my God my sweetest dear delight Was I yet then also any where Or any thing Which none can tell me neither Father nor Mother that begot me neither others experience nor my own memory And dost not thou now deride this my curiousity demanding thee such questions Who only requirest my lauding of thee and confessing unto thee concerning things within the circle of my knowledge I confesse therefore unto thee Lord of Heaven and Earth and give thee praiâ—e for that my first conception and that my new-born infancy in which things though beyond our remembrance thou hast given unto us a conjecture of our selves from our experience of others and from the authority of those who then attended us Then had I being and life and cogitation and toward the wane of my infancy invention of expressive signes to make my meanings known to others And whence such a vitall sensitive piece of matter as I was then but from thee O Lord Can any be his own Creator Or can there be derived from any other sourse the smallest vein Psal 100.2 that may stream essence and life into us but only from thee who thus hast made us In whom Being and Living are not a several thing but thou art one and the same highest supremity of both For Ps. 83.18 Psal 102.26 thou art the most-high and thou art not changed Neither doth To-day ever passe-away in thee and yet in thee it is that it passeth away for even these transitories are not but as in thee Nor have they any way of passing away but as conveyed through thee and yet mean while Psal 102.26 because thy years fail not therefore thy years are but a continued to-day And how many dayes of ours and of our forefathers have flowed away through this thy one ever-fixed day and from it received the mould and fashion of their being And how many more yet shall flow and shall so receive the measure of their being Whilst thou art still the same and all the things of to-morrow Psal 102.26 and what ever is beyond it and all the things of yesterday and whatever is behind it in this thy day thou shalt make and in this thy day thou hast made them What doth it import me if any understands not this Let such a one praise thee in saying what meaneth this high mystery Even so let him praise thee and rather chuse in not apprehending to conceive nothing but right of thee †That is that thou art incomprehensible than in apprehending amiss to conceive something below thee CHAP VII And* of its sins And his praising God for its good endowments HEar O God wo wo unto the sins of Men and Man confessing this thou takest compassion of him because thou hast made him but yet madest not sin in him O who can recount unto me the concealed sins of my unknown Infancy from which none is pure in thy sight O Lord not the child that is a day old
yet cured of the former How much better had it been for me to have been so early healed and that with my own and my friends strict care the health of my soul thus restored might have been ever after kept entire by thy preserving what thou hadst restored This surely had been much the better But that my good Mother already foreseeing how many and how great billows of temptations after my childhood spent were ready to assault and to ore-set my more unbridled youth chose rather to expose to their blows me now before baptism as yet a lump of rude clay which by it afterward might be new moulded than me when by the Sacraments thy new-formed image which so perchance might happen to be defaced CHAP. XII Of his sins and errours at School and of their's that instructed him YEt in this my childhood far less feared for miscarriage than more head-strong youth I hated study and yet more to be pressed to it and yet I was forced to it and well that I was so but in that forced studying I did not well who learned only from constraint for none doth well what he doth unwillingly though it be well what he doth But neither did those that urged me so in it do well but it was thou only O my God in it that didst well unto me for they who so earnestly urged me unto it saw not to what good use I might employ it save only to go about to satisfie the unsatiable desires of wealthy poverty and ignominious glory Mat. 10 3. But thou by whom the very hairs of our head are all numbred meanwhile didst make good use of all our errours â–³ of their errour in forcing me * to my profit and â–³ of mine in being averse from it * to my punishment which I well deserved being so little a childe and so great a sinner So thou didst well unto me by those who did not well and didst as justly take revenge on me in that very thing wherein I did amisse For thou hast appointed and so it is that every inordinate affection should be to it self it s own torment CHAP XIII Of his hating Greek and other necessary learning and affection to Poetry and fables BUt why at that time I should so much hate Greek I do not yet well understand for Latine I liked very well I mean not that which our first Masters spell unto us but that which the Grammarians teach for that first learning to Read and Write and cast up an Account I thought as afflicting and vexatious as the Greek And whence this also but from sin and the vanity of this life Because I was flesh and a wind that passeth away and cometh not again Psal 78.39 For that first learning was for the better because truer and more certain which enriched me with a faculty necessary and as easily retained whereby I both read now what I finde written and write my self what I have a minde than this other in which I learnt and was enjoyned to remember the errors and wandrings of I know not what Aeneas forgetful of my own errors and shed tears for the death of one Dido who killed herself for love when meanwhile I beheld my self in these amorous toyes perishing from thee O God my life with dry eyes miserable Creature as I then was for what is more miserable than one that is in misery and yet hath no commiseration of himself sadly bewailing wanton Dido's death caused by excesse of love to Aeneas and never deploring his own death caused by want of love to thee O God the glorious light of my heart and delicate food of the inner mouth of my soul and celestiall power that now espouseth my mind possessing the bosome of my thoughts I did not then love thee and went a whoreing from thee and to this my fornication it was ecchoed on every side Euge Euge well-done well-done for the friendship of this world is fornication against thee Jam. 4.4 And they cry well-well-done that a shame to-be-ashamed-of may possess him who is not such a one as they commend And these things I lamented not but lamented despairing perishing Dido Didonem extinctam ferroque extrema secutam Aeneid 6. lib. My self following the same extremities even the lowest of thy creatures and forsaking thee earth tending toward earth and when I was forbiden to read these things I was grieved because I read not what might make me grieve And yet such foolery as this was accounted by me farr more gentile and polite Science â—han that whereby I learnt to write and read But now let my God say unto my soul and let thy truth tell me 't is otherwise and the former learning is far the better of the two for I shall sooner and had rather forget Aeneas his travells and all such like toyes than to write and read I therefore when a boy did sin in preferring in my fond affection these empty things before those useful or rather in hating the one whilst I doted on the other For then One and one makes two two and two four was an odious repetition to me Whilst the wooden Horse lined with armed men and the flaming funeralls of Troy and lost Creusa's ghost were most ravishing Idols of my vanity CHAP. XIIII WHy then hated I the Greek tongue presenting me with the like fictions for learned Homer hath likewise curiously woven such like pleasant-tales and is in his poems wost sweetly-vain but yet was very bitter to me when a school boy and so is Virgil I believe to the youth of Greece when forced to learn him with so much difficulty as I did the other For the hardness of attaining a forreign-tongue did as it were oresprinkle with gall all the sweets of such fabulous stories For I knew not the words of that language and meanwhile was frighted with cruell terrors and tortures to learn to know them 'T is true also that once in my Infancy I understood no Latine But this tongue I easily learned by observation only without fear or stripes amidst the flatterings of my nurses and the chat of my play-fellows And so I learned that tongue without the penall task of constraint my surcharged heart sufficiently pressing me to a speedy delivery of its conceptions in the like expressions which I learned not from those that taught but that talked with me in whose ears I did also bring-forth whatever my mind preconceived Whence it appears that such things are better learnt from a free unspurred curiosity than from a timorous necessity But yet the one well qualifies and bridles the over-loosness of the other in the wise restraint of thy good laws O God upon us which from the Masters ferula to the tryals of Martyrs do intermix and infuse those wholsom bitternesses which may reduce us still unto thee from the infectious sweets that allure us to depart from thee CHAP. XV. His offering up to God the fruits of his learning O Lord hear my
livelihood or from the other feared some such losse or first insured thirsted for revenge Would he commit a murder upon no cause taken only with the murder who can imagine this for as for that furious and cruel †Catiline man that was said to be gratuito malus atque crudelis spontaneously wicked and blood-thirsty gratis yet is there a cause assigned ne per otium c. lâ—st his mind or hand through idleness should grow useless And why indeed was he such but * that the City being surprized by his mischievous practises he might possess the honour wealth command thereof * that in so necessitous a fortune so guilty a conscience he might be free from fear of laws and of want Therefore was not Catiline himself in love with his own villanies but with something else for which sake he did them CHAP. VI. BUt O my Theft that wicked night-exploit of my sixteen years age what was it then that wretched I so much loved in thee For nothing fair thou wert because thou wert Theft or indeed wert thou at all any thing that thus I speak unto thee Indeed the fruit we robbed was fair because it was thy Creature thou fairest of all Creator of all my good God God my true and my supream good fair was the fruit but that was not it after which my miserable soul lusted having thereof far better in great plenty of our own But the other rather I liked because so I might steal it which being once gathered as having now sufficiently satisfied my appetite I threw it away enjoying thereof only the pleasure of the sin or if I chanced to tast any of the fruit that which sweetned it unto me was the offence And now O Lord my God fain would I know what it was in this fault that so much delighted me and behold I cannot find the least allurance of any beauty in it I do not mean such beauty as is seen in the divine habits of Justice and Prudence or as in the highest faculties of understanding and memory or as in the subtility of the senses or yet in the vigours of Vegetation nor yet inferiour to these as the stars are glorious and orderly in their Orbs or as the Earth and Sea are beautifull in their kind being alwayes laden with breed a new growth of which in their unexhausted womb still succeeds a former departed But I mean such a gloss at least as there is a faint and painted one in many a deluding vice For both * the sin of pride to be some way like unto thee emulates highness when as thou art only above all the most high God And * Ambition aims at glory and honour when as thou alone art honourable supreamly and eternally glorious And * the cruelty of the great ones desires so to become reverenced and feared and who is to be feared but God alone from whose power what Psal 76.7 or when or where or how or by whom can ever any thing by force or fraud be subducted And * the caresses of the lascivious seek to be loved when as neither is any thing so dearly sweet as thy Love nor so savingly enamouring as thy above-all-beautifull and enlightning Truth And * Curiosity makes semblance of a desire of knowledge when as it is Thou that perfectly understandest all things Also even * ignorance and folly clothes it self with the name of simplicity and innocency because not any thing is found like simple as thy self and what is there innocent like thee whose works are harmfull only to the sinner And * sloth affects as it were quiet but what repose certain besides the Lord * Luxury desires to be called satiety and plenty yet thou art the only fulness and never-failing abundance of uncorrupting dainties * Lavishing hides it self under the shadow of liberality but the most royally overflowing doner of all good things is thy self * Avarice would have much to be in its fruition and it is Thou that possessest all things * Envy contends for pre-eminence and what is so pre-excellent as thy self * Anger pretends just vengeance and who executes it righteously like thee * Fear abhorrs things unusuall surprizing and Enemies to what she loves whilst she is alwayes precautelous of her safety now to thee only it is that nothing comes unacquainted or sudden and who can part what thou lovest from thee and where but with thee ever dwells unshaken security * Sorrow pines for those things lost in whose enjoyment she delighted because she desires that nothing may be taken away from her as nothing can from thee After these the soul goes a whoring when she is departed from thee and seeks besides thee what she never finds pure and clear but when returned unto thee And yet all they in a wrong way imitate and seek likeness unto thee who render themselves far from thee and who pride themselves most against thee And in this their imitating and resembling thee shew thee to be the Creator of all nature and that in it they cannot any-whither recede from thee What therefore in that Theft was it that I loved and in what here though viciously and perversly have I also imitated my Lord Was it that I had a desire to act against the law by sleight where I could not by power and though restrained by it yet would imitate a lame kind of liberty in doing free from punishment what I could not free from guilt out of a fond resemblance of thy omnipotency CHAP VII He laments his offences and praiseth God for the Remission thereof by Baptisme SEe if this were a good Servant thus flying from his Lord and embracing a shadow of him O corruption monstrosity of life profoundness of death could I then lust after what was unlawfull for no other reason but because unlawfull Psal 116.12 What shall I render unto the Lord that whilst my memory now recalls these things my soul doth not dread them I will love thee O Lord my God and give thanks unto thee and confess unto thy name because thou hast forgiven my so great iniquities and detestable deeds To thy grace I depute it Psal 9.2 and to thy mercy that those sins I committed are now dissolved like ice and to thy grace I depute it also whatsoever other sins I have not committed for what one crime would I not have acted who loved such an act for its being criminous Therefore * of all these sins †Being sins committed before his Baptism I confess my self released by thee not only * of those by my own wilfulness effected but * of those by thy guidance avoided And who is he that well-weighing his frailty dares to attribute his chastity or his innocence to his own ability that so he should less love thee as less obliged to that thy mercy by which thou remittest sins to those who return unto thee And whoever he be that called by hee hath straight followed thy voice and hath happily escaped
seemed to me as it vvere condemned to a capital punishment if given unto him CHAP XI His weeping Mother comforted * by a vision concerning his Conversion ANd thou sentest thine hand from above and drewest my soul out of this profound darkness whilst my Mother being one of thy †All and only the Baptized were called Fideles Faithful wept for me unto thee far more bitterly than other mothers bewail any corporeal funerals For well discerned she that my far worser death by the Faith and the Spirit which she had from thee And Thou hearkenedst unto her thou hearkenedst unto her nor despisedst thou her tears when streaming from her they watered the ground in every place of her devotions and thou hearkenedst unto her For whence else-came-that Dream wherewith thou comfortedst her so far as to perswade her that I should live with her again and sit at the same table in the house again with her a thing she had begun to be averse from avoiding and detesting the horrid blasphemies of those my errours For she saw in her sleep her self standing upon a certain straight wooden Rule and coming toward her a beautiful yong man cheerful and smiling upon her as she was weeping and spent with grief who asking the cause of that her sorrow and daily tears with intention to instruct not to learn of her and she answering that it was my perdition she so bewailed he bade her be secure and wished her to look about and she should see that where she was I was also who when she looked aside saw me close by her standing upon the same Rule And from whence all this but from thy attentive ears formerly bowed to her praying heart O Thou Good Omnipotent so caring for every one of us as if thou caredst for him only yet so caring for all as for any one Whence again was that also that she relating to me her Vision and I interpreting it thus that she rather should not despair of being one day what I was suddenly without any hesitation No said she for it was not said to me where he there also you But where you there also he I confesse unto thee O Lord as much as I remember and I have often spoke of it that this answer of thine given me by my mother when she was now awake that she not at all perplext with that false but indeed very colourable interpretation of mine so quickly saw that which also my self before she spake it had not observed struck me even at that time far more than her dream in which this pious woman had her joy to come so long after foretold her for the solace of her present grief so long before For there succeeded yet almost nine years in which I endeavouring often to arise and by this still plunged so much the deeper lay wallowing in the mire of that pit and darknesse of errour the while that chast devout sober Widow such as thou lovest already much chearfuller in her hopes but no whit slacker in her weeping and laments never ceased at all the hours of her devotions to bewail my condition unto thee And her prayers found admittance into thy presence and notwithstanding thou let'st me go on to be involved and reinvolved more and more in that cloud of darknesse CHAP. XII And * by the answer of a Bishop who notwithstanding refused to reason with him as yet too-self-conceited ANd in this interim Thou gavest her yet another answer which now I call to mind For many things I omit hasting to those which more urge my confession unto thee and many things I have forgot Thou gavest therefore yet another answer by thy Priest a certain Bishop one nursed within the bosom of thy Church and well-experienced in thy Books Whom that woman soliciting that he would vouchsafe a Conference with me to refute my errours and to unteach me ill and to instruct me good things for this he did where haply he found persons capable he refused and that very prudently as I perceived since answering her that I was as yet indocile being swollen and puft up with the novelty of that heresy For already I had netled divers unexpert men with some trifling questions as she also had declared unto him But Let him alone said he where he is only pray to our Lord for him In reading he will at length discover what that errour is and how great its impiety He told also that he when a little one was by his seduced Mother committed to the Manichees institution and had not only read but also copied out almost all their books and that himself discerned unopposed or convinced by any how much to be abhorred that impious sect was and that so he forsook it This said and she neverthelesse not satisfyed but persisting with much intreating and weeping much that he would see me would discourse with me now a little disgusted with this her importunity Go your way said he and may you live happy for it cannot be that the childe of those tears should miscarry Which speech she received in such manner as she hath since many times told me as if an oracle from heaven had sounded it unto her LIB IV. CHAP. I. From the Nineteenth to his twenty eighth year continuing addicted to the Manichees FOr this space of Nine years from the Nineteenth of my age to the Twenty-eighth we lived in various lusts seduced and seducing deceived and deceiving openly by the Sciences which they call Liberal secretly with a false-named Religion here arrogant there superstitious every where vain and zealous of the emptiness of popular praise in Theatrical applause and playing publick prizes of wit and in contentions for crowns of Hay and the fooleries of shews and the excesse of Lusts From which uncleannesses otherwhiles desiring expiation in the company of those who are called the Elect and the Saints we †The Manichees Sacrament carried provision which in the forge of their stomachs was to be moulded into Angels and Gods by whom we were to be cleansed Such things I followed and such things I practised I and my friends seduced both with and by me Let the arrogant deride me and those not yet savingly cast down and broken by thee O my God but let me continue to confess unto thee my disgrace to thy praise Permit I pray thee and grant unto me with a present memory to repass through all those past circles of my errour and from thence to offer unto thee the sacrifice of joy For what am I to my self at any time without thee but an infant sucking thy milk and feeding on thee the meat not perishing Nay what is any man that man is Let them laugh at us then the strong and mighty whilst we the infirm and poor confesse unto thee CHAP. II. Of his teaching Rhetorick in Thagaste the City where he was borne his having a Concubine yet true to her bed his playing a prize of poetry on the Theater yet refusing
straight they decrease again and wither for all of them have their decadency and fade they do all Therefore also when they spring and blossom toward a being look how much more speedily they advance to be the more precipitancy again they make not to be Such their condition and such a lot hast thou bequeathed them because they are parcels of things which are not consistent all together but which by some still retiring and others coming on all of them successively build up that fleeting Universe of which they are parcels In the same manner as our speech is composed of many significant sounds and cannot be perfected unless each word thereof give way and vanish when it hath sounded its part that another may succeed it From all these Creatures O God let my soul raise praises unto thee the Creator of them all but never let my corporeal senses fasten me unto them with the glew of love For they go whither they alwayes did go hastily toward a not-being and then wound and rack the soul with most pestilent longings because she would fain be nothing but what they are and loves to set up her final rest in the thing she loves and in them there is no place of repose for they stay not but pass away And who can with the senses of this flesh either pursue them when gone or comprehend them when at hand For the fleshly sense is slow-paced because it is but the sense of flesh and this is the condition of it And sufficient it is for those ends for which it was made but for this it serveth not to detain and stay things here running their prescribed race and hasting from their beginning appointed to their appointed period For in thy word by which they were created there they all hear their sentence Hinc huc usque Hence and hitherto CHAP. XI The transition of its parts is necessary to make this Vniverse compleat BE no more so vain O my soul nor suffer the tumultuous noise of thy busie vanity to deafen the ear of thy heart Hearken thou also unto the word for it speaks unto thee to return back from these unto it and that there is the seat of un-molested quiet where thy love shall never if it forsake not be forsaken Behold those other things are alway departing that other things yet may succeed and this lower fleeting globe be compleated with all its parts But do I any where depart saith the word of God Isa 40.8 There then fix thine abode thither devote all that thou hast from thence received O my soul at least now after thou hast been out-wearied with impostures Recommend over unto truth what hath been imparted to thee from her and thou shalt so not suffer loss yea thy decayes shall enjoy a fresh spring and thy languors be restored the continual flux of thy materials shall be renovated and re-fashioned and made permanent with thee nor shall they sway thee down also whether they now descend but stand with thee and abide for ever before God who abides and standeth fast for ever To what end therefore dost thou so erroneously pursue the inclinations of thy perverting flesh Rather now let it converted follow after thee For whatever thou discernest by it is only a part of the successive Universe and the whole is yet unknown by thee whereof these are parts and yet so little a part of it delights thee But had thy carnal sense any capacity of comprehending the whole and had it not for thy punishment by reason of its mortality been confined to the prospect only of a small part thereof thou wouldst have wished a speedy transition of these parts which for the present exist that from the whole perfected thou mightst have received a supream content For by the same carnal sense also thou hearest what we speak yet wouldst thou not have one syllable still to sound before thee but sly away by thee and others come till thou maist hear the whole Even so are some of them ever in being which make up one whole yet are they never all together of which that whole is made And these would please more all together than the severall pieces could they be all at once surveyed by thee Yet farr better than all these summed together is he who made them all and this is our God and he hath no transition because he hath no succession If bodies therefore attract thy affection let thy praises from them ascend unto God and thy love wheel about unto their Maker lest in those things which please thee thou displease him CHAP. XII To rest our love upon God and to love other things only for and in him OR if souls delight thee in God let these be loved because these also subject to mutability from him only have their stability else ‖ Alioquin irent perirent pass-on they would and at last pass-away In him therefore let these also be loved And entice with thee to him as many of them as thou canst and say unto them him let us love him let us love He made these things and he is not farr off For he made them not and so left them but being of him they are in him too Lo where he is Where truth is rellished well He is in the heart but alas that heart hath strayed from him Isa 46.8 Vulg. Return O prevaricators unto your heart again and be united unto him that made you Stand with him and ye shall stand fast rest in him and ye shall be at rest Whither go ye into precipices Whither go ye The Good ye court and woo is from Him and so much as it is it is in your tending toward him good and delicious to you But justly then embittered to us when it is once unjustly loved with the desertion of him from whom it is To what purpose still and still tread ye those difficult and toilsome paths Rest is not there where ye seek it seek freely what ye do seek but there it is not where you are seeking it A blessed life ye seek in the region of death and it is not there How life happy there where neither life But life it self descended hither and underwent our death and out of the super-abundance of its life slew it And then with a voice of thunder called out unto us that we should hence return unto him into that secret place from whence he came forth unto us coming into that first pure Virgins womb where he espoused this humane creature of our mortal flesh Ps 19.5 that it might not be ever mortal and thence like a Bridegroom going forth of his chamber he rejoyced as a Giant to run his course But did run all the way here staid not calling out unto us by his words by his deeds by his death by his life by his descension by his Ascension calling out unto us to return unto him and then presently vanished from our eyes that we might return
didst unto me * by vain men only taken with the things of this dying life by some on one side doing mad things and some on the other side promising vain * and thus to reform my present ill courses thou secretly madest use of both their and my own faulty inclinations For both those who thus disturbed my quiet were blinded with a sottish madness and those who invited my removall favoured only Earthly advantages and my self who loathed my present misery yet courted elsewhere but a false felicity But another end why I should leave this place and go to that thou then well knowest my God neither shewedst thou it to me nor to my mother who miserably lamented my departure and followed me to the Sea-side that either she might yet reduce or else her self also accompany me And I feigned that my design was only to accompany a friend till he had a favourable wind for his embarquement and should put to Sea and thus I lied to my mother and to such a mother and got away from her Nevertheless thou in thy great mercy didst not instantly revenge this fault upon me but savedst me from the waters of the Sea a soul so stained with execrable filthiness unto the baptismall waters of thy grace with which I being once washed and made clean those rivers also of my mothers eyes might be dryed up which from her sad face daily watered the ground under her feet poured out unto thee in my behalf There she refusing upon any terms to return back without me I with much ado perswaded her for that night to take some rest in a place that was very near to our ship being †An Oratory dedicated to S. Cyprian where were conserved some of his Reliques a memoriall of St. Cyprian's but that same night I stole away to sea and she was left there praying and weeping And what was it that with so many tears she begged of thee but that thou wouldst put a let to that voyage but thou deep in thy counsels and yielding then also unto her in the sum of her desires regardedst her not in the particular she then requested of thee that so in an higher manner thou mightest accomplish it in the main thing for which she alwayes petitioned thee The wind blew fair and swel'd our sails and the shore withdrew it self from our sight whither my Mother being returned next morning to seek me was now overwhelmed with grief and filled thine ears with groans and complaints thine ears that despised her moan whilst by the the means of my lusts thou hurriedst me away to put an end to those very lusts and chastisedst this her too carnal affection to me with a just scourge of sorrow For she as other Mothers do but much more than many do loved and desired my corporal presence with her and knew not how much joy thou wert preparing for her out of that my absence She knew it not then and therefore mourned and wept and shewed the Reliques of Eve in her seeking thus with sorrow what with sorrow she had brought forth At last after a sad accusation of that my cosenage and cruel behaviour toward a Mother returning again to her prayers to deprecate Thee for that my fault she went about her accustomed affairs and I towards Rome CHAP. IX Coming to Rome he is stricken with a dangerous fever the recovery from which he imputes to his Mothers prayers ANd lo there presently I am smitten with a rod of corporal sickness and now am going post to the place below carrying with me all those evills I had committed against Thee and my self and others many and grievous besides the chain of Original guilt by which we all dye in Adam For as yet Thou hadst remitted nothing unto me in Christ nor had he yet slain that enmity by his Crosse which by my sins I had incurred with thee For how could he take them away by that only-phantastical Crosse of his which I believed How false therefore at that time the death of his flesh seemed to me so true was the death of my soul and how true the death of his flesh was indeed so false was the life of my soul which then did not credit it And thus my fever much increasing I now approached to the very point of dying and of dying eternally For whither had I gone if I had dyed then but into flames and torments sutable to my deeds according to the setled truth of thy ordinance concerning us And my poâ—r mother knew nothing of this yet did I absent enjoy her prayers and Thou omnipresent where she was gavest ear unto her and where I was hadst pity on me in restoring me again to the health of my body though still sick and much distempered in a sacrilegious mind For neither did I so much as desire thy baptism in that my great peril and much better affected I was when I was yet a child and earnestly requested it of my mothers piety as I have before recited and confessed But as I grew bigger so I grew worse and madly derided the prescription of this thy medicine who yet permittedst me not when in such a case so to dye a double death Which had it happened my mothers heart also would have received a wound incurable For I cannot expresse the great affection she bare me nor with how much more sorrow and pain she travelled-again of me to bring me forth * in the spirit then she had formerly done at her child-bearing * in the flesh I see not therefore how ever she should have been cured if these bowels of her love had been once pierced with such a sad end of my life And then what would have become of so many and so passionate prayers without intermission †Nusquam insi the same as nusquaÌ„ non see M. Wats his annotations in all places made by her unto thee Couldst thou a God of mercies despise the contrite and humble heart of a desolate widdow so chast and so sober so abounding in almes-deeds so dutiful and officious to thy saints no day omitting her oblation at thine Altar twice in the day Morning and Evening without intermission coming to thy Church not for vain chat and idle tales but that she might hear Thee in thy words thou her in her prayers by thee then could the tears of such a one wherewith she begged of thee neither silver nor gold nor any mutable or fading good but only the safety of the soul of her poor son could the tears of such a one by thee who madest her such be neglected and contemned and fail of thy help No Lord yea thou wert present and heardst and didst her requests according to the order of thy own predesignments of them to be done Farr was it from thee that thou shouldst deceive her in those visions of hers or answers of thine some already related some omitted by me which pre-engagements from thee she treasured up in a believing
luckiness in them and that in their speaking many things that should were spoken some things which did after come to passe not foreknown by those who said them but happened on by their not saying nothing Thou procuredst I say a friend of mine a curious consulter of Astrologers though himself not much seen in it who related to me something from his father which though he made little reflection thereupon served very much for the overthrow of the vain esteem of that Science This man therefore by name Firminus ingenuously educated and well studied in eloquence consulting me as one very dear to him what I collected from his Constellations as he call'd them concerning some important affair of his to which his secular hopes aspired and I who was now somewhat inclined to Nebridius his opinion conjecturing and divining thereupon what my doubting mind met-with in the Art but withall superadding that I was almost perswaded all those things were ridiculous and vain he proceeded to tell me how his father was a most curious student of such books and had also a friend alike-affected who with emulating studies and comparing of their observations were so farre enflamed toward those toyes as that when any mute Animals of their own brought forth young they marked the moment of their birth and set down the positions of the Heavens in them from whence they might gather some experiments of this Art And he said he had heard from his father that when his mother was great with child of the said Firminus a certain maid-servant of his friends happened to be big with child at the same time not unremarked by her Master who observed with most exact diligence even the puppyings of his dogs and that so it happened that they with most wary observation accounting one the day hour minute of his wifes the other of his maids being brought to bed both were delivered at the same instant so that they were forced to set down the same calculation to a minute of the Nativity one of his son the other of his servant For as soon as the women fell in labour they gave mutuall notice and had one ready to send to each other so soon as the child was born and those sent met so justly in the mid-way that neither of them was permitted to observe any position of the starrs or particle of time different from the other And yet Firminus as honourably descended ran the more happy courses of this world increased in wealth was advanced in dignities But the servant having the yoke of his condition no way eased waited on a Master as he told me vvho very vvell knevv him Hearing therefore and believing these things from so creditable an Author all my former reluctance presently melted and first I endeavoured to reduce Firminus from this curiosity saying That from the inspection of his Constellations to tell him the truth of what should succeed I was in them to discern that his parents were of better quality his family noble of the City where they lived his extraction and his education honourable his studies ingenuous But if afterward the servant out of these Constellations for he had the same consulted me to tell him the truth also I must in them behold his fortune a most abject family a condition servile and all other things farr differing and much contrary to the former Whence it would follow that on the same aspects I was to read contrary fortunes if I foretold the truth or if I read the same fortune must say what was false And hence I gathered that what is spoken true from consideration of such Constellations is said not by Art but by guesse and what is spoken false is not from any unskilfulness of Art but from the errour of guessing From this entrance upon a further consideration of these things lest any who lived by this trade whom I much desired to confute and render ridiculous should reply that Firminus to me or his father at least to him had told an untruth I reflected my thoughts on those who are born twins who ordinarily are excluded into the world so hastily one after the other that the small interval of time whatever operation they may pretend it to have in nature yet cannot be collected by humane observation nor expressed in the composition of any figure out of which the Astrologer is to make his prognostication His predictions therefore either cannot be true if from perusing the same figure he should say the same things for example of Esau and Jacob when as the same things happened not to them both Or if true he must not say the same of them whereas yet his inspection was utterly the same Therefore not from Art but chance it is that he speaketh truth For thou O Lord the most just Moderator of the Universe whilst the consulters and the consulted know not any thing by a secret instinct orderest what is fit both that the one should say and the other hear according to the hidden merits of souls and the abyss of thy just judgement Eâ—clus 35.17 To whom let none say What is this wherefore is that let him not say let him not say it for he is but a man CHAP. VII Prâ—secuâ—ing the same query Unde Malum THus loosed from these bonds by thee my Helper yet I was still in a labyrinth concerning the query From whence Evil and could find no way out Yet thou didst not suffer me by any wayes of those my cogitations to be carried away from the right faith by which I believed both that thou wert and that thy substance was immutable and that thou didst take a care of and didst justice amongst men and that in Christ thy Son our Lord and in the holy Scriptures which the authority of thy Catholick Church recommended unto me thou hadst appointed a way of mans salvation in reference to that life which after this present death shall be enjoyed These points therefore being safe and well-quieted in my mind I still hotly enquired from whence should come Evil. And what pangs were those of my heart in travel what groans O my God And there were thine eares receiving them and I knew it not and whilst in silence I importunatly sought the tacite contritions of my soul were powerful clamours to thy mercy Psal 38.9 10. Vulgar Ante te omne desiderium meum lumen oculorum meorum non est mecum And my desire was before thee and the true light of mine eyes was not with me For it was within and I was abroad Neither possessed it any place But my fancy was intent only upon things circumscribed by place and amongst them I found no place of rest and neither did they so well entertain me that I could say I am well this is enough Nor yet did they quite release me to return where it might be well enough with me For I was much superiour to them as inferiour to thee And thou wouldest be true joy and
least consideration only I knâ—w from what was storied of him concerning his eating drinking sleeping rejoycing sorrowing discoursing c that * humane flesh was not united unto thy Word alone which was the Apollinarian errour but together with it * an humane both sensitive and rational soul And I hold that he was to be preferred before all others not * as being the very Person of the Truth but * from a certain very great excellency of his humane nature and from his more perfect participation of the divine Wisdom But Alipius imagined the Catholicks to believe God cloathed with Flesh in such a manner as that besides the Deity and the flesh of man there were in Christ no soul or mind of a man and because he held it for certain that the things recorded of him could not be performed but by a Creature both vital and rational therefore he made somewhat a slower progress toward the Christian Faith But afterward knowing this to be the Heresie of the Apollinarists he much congratulated and readily entertained the Catholick belief And for my self I confess I learnt not till afterwards how in the manner of the Words being made Flesh and in the mystery of the Incarnation the Catholick Truth was distinguished from the Photinian errour For the opposition and contest of Hereticks more illustrates the sound doctrine of the Church And there must be also Heresies 1 Cor. 11 19. that they which are approved may be made manifest amongst the weak and infirme CHAP. XX. Though from the Platonick writings he became assured of many divine Truths yet these books breeding pride in him and not humility UPon reading these writings of the Platonists being already instructed to seek after a verity incorporeal and disengaged of Bodies I beheld thy invisible things understood by the things which are made and being repulsed had a glimpse only of that which by reason of the darkness of my soul I could not more fully contemplate being thus farre assured that thou art and art infinite yet without any diffusion of thee either through finite or infinite space and that thou only hast true being and alwayes the same being in no part of thee by any motion mutable and that all others in that they are are from thee These things I was then assured of concerning thee but yet farre too infirme to enjoy thee And I * talked as one that had knowledge when as had I not fought out the way to thee in Christ our Saviour I had been eternally lost and * began to affect the seeming wise being full of my punishment and I deplored not this my misery but was also puft up and exalted with my Science 1 Cor. 8.1 But where was that charity edifying on the foundation of humility which is Christ Jesus Or when could these books have learned me that To which writings I suppose thou guidedst me before any studying of thy Scriptures that my memory might afterward reflect on the affections they caus'd in me and that when I should be asswaged and humbled afterward in perusing thy book and my sores had been dressed by thy all-healing hands I might discern and distinguish between blind presumption and humble confession between those who saw to what place they should go but saw not what way and those who enjoyed the Way it self leading into that beatifical Country not to be seen only by them but inhabited For had I been first instituted in thy holy books and thou in their familiar entertainment hadst there grown sweet and dear unto me and then afterward I had happened on these volumes perhaps either their novelty last looked on might have removed me in something from the foundation of piety Or in my retaining stedfast still the saving principles and affections I had imbib'd from thence yet I might have thought that those other books though alone studied might have produced the like CHAP. XXI He lastly betakes himself to reading of the Scriptures especially those of S. Paul where he finds the advancement of Gods Grace and salvation through Jesus Christ to the penitent and humble AFter these therefore with an extraordinary ardour I betook my self to the venerable stile of thy Spirit and above the rest of the Apostles to the writings of S. Paul And those scruples presently vanished wherein his discourse had sometimes seemed to me contradictory to it self and also not agreeing with the testimonies of the Law and the Prophets And now it appeared one uniform piece of chast and pure doctrine and I learned to rejoyce in them with reverence and trembling And I attempted them and found what truths I had read in the other books to be said here also but with great recommendation and advancing of thy Grace * that he who sees should not boast as though he had not received both that which he sees and that he sees it 1 Cor. 4.7 For what thing hath any which he hath not received and * that he must by thee who art alwayes the same not only be admonished and instructed that he may see but also his infirmity be healed that he may possesse And * that he who being yet afarre off cannot see yet ought to walk in the way whereby he may come to approach nearer and to see and possess Rom. 7. Because indeed though a man delight in the Law of God after the inward man yet what shall he do concerning the other law in his members warâ—ing against the law of his mind and bringing him into captivity to the law of sin which is in his members because that thou arâ— just Dan. 9.5 O Lord and we have sinned Dan. 9.5 and done wickedly and behaved our selves impiously and therefore thy hand is heavy upon us and we are justly delivered over to that old sinner Heb. 2.14 the President and Prince of death because he perswaded unto our will a conformity unto his will which remained not stedfast in thy Truth And now wretched man that he is what shall he do For who shall deliver him from the body of this death but thy grace through Jesus Christ our Lord Prov. 8.22 John 14 30. Col. 2.14 whom thou hast begotten coeternal with thy self and hast possessed in the beginning of thy wayes In whom the Prince of this world found nothing worthy of death and yet slâ—w him by whose death for us was cancelled the hand-writing which was against us Those other learnings contain none of these matters Those pages present no such Scene of piety as this viz. the teaâ—s of confession thy acceptable sacâ—ifice an afflicted spirit an humble and câ—nâ—â—iâ—e heart the salvation of mankind the celâ—stâ—al bridal-City the present earnest of the Spirit the precious cup of our redemption No ravish'd spirit there breaks out into such a song Truly my soul waiteth upon God Psal 62.1 For from him cometh my salvation He only is my rock and my salvation he is my undertaker no more shall I be moved
she rendred herself such a peacemaker that when hearing mutually from both of them many bitter reproachings of one another such as a swelling and undigested choler useth to belch up when the crudities of hatred are exhaled and breathed forth in a soure discourse to som one present whom they affect concerning another absent whom they disrelish yet she never disclosed any thing of the one to the other but only what tended to their reconcilement A small vertue in her would this have seemed to me but that by sad experience I find innumerable multitudes I know not from what horrid contagion of sin very zealous not only * to disclose to enemies when in anger what is said by their enemies in their ang r but also themselves * to superadd things which were not said by such enemies Whereas for a mind endued with any humanity it is too small a kindnesse not to divulge and exagitate others quarrellings and reproaches or not to augment them also with their own speaking evill unlesse they do endeavour likewise by their own well-speaking to abate and extinguish them And such a one was she being taught by thee her interiour Master in the school of her heart Lastly she being such gained also her husband unto thee in the latter end of his temporal life and now at length no more lamented those disorders in him a Christian professour which she had so long patiently tolerated in him before it She was also a servant of all those who were thy Servants and there was none of them that knew her but that much praised thee and honoured thee and loved thee in her because they discovered thy presence in her heart 1 Tim. 5.4 9 10. by the testimony of the fruits of an holy conversation For she had been the Wife of one man had requited her parents had piously governed her own house was well reported of for good works had brought up Children so often labouring again in a new birth of them as she perceived them to stray from thee Lastly for all us O Lord thy Servants since thou permittest us to call our selves what thou hast made us who a little before her end lived now together associated and co-united in thee after our receit of the grace of thy baptism such care took she of us as if she had been the Mother to us all such services did she for us as if she had been the daughter to us all CHAP. X The discourses between Him and his Mother at Ostia some few dayes before her sickness concerning the felicities of the next life Her desire of Death ANd now the day near approaching that she was to depart out of this life which day Thou knewest though we were not aware of it it came to passe Thou through thy secret providence so ordering it that she and I stood alone leaning on a window that looked forth into the Garden of the house * where we lodged in that town of Ostia upon Tiber and * where retired from company and noise after the hard travell of a long journy we were repairing our Spirits for a Sea-voyage There we were discoursing together we two alone very sweetly and forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are before we were enquiring between our selves in the presence of the Truth which thy self art O Lord What thing the eternal life of the blessed hereafter shall be 1 Cor. 2.9 Which eye hath not seen nor ear heard nor hath it entred into the heart of man But yet we gasped with the mouth of our heart directed toward the celestial streams of thy Fountain that Fountain of life which is with thee that watered from thence according to our present capacity we might in some measure contemplate so high a matter And after our discourse had f rst concluded thus much that there was no delectation of the senses of our Flesh what or in how great corporeal beauty and splendour soever it might be that seemed worthy I say not to be compared but at all to be mentioned in regard of the pleasure of that life to come elevating our selves yet higher than these with an ardent pursuit thereof we made a perambulation by several ascents through all corporeals and through heaven it self from whence the Sun and moon and Stars illuminate the earth And leaving thâ—se we yet ascended more interiourly in the sweet contemplation and speech of thee and admiration of thy works and came to consider these soules of ours and we mounted above and transcended these also that so possibly we might at length arrive at that Country of never failing fertility where thou feedest Israel for ever with the food of Truth and where the Life is that Wisdom by which are made all those things both that have been and that shall be but it self is not made but so is as heretofore it was and so shall be ever though indeed to have been heretofore or hereafter to be agree not to it but to Be only because it is eternal For to have been or hereafter to be is not eternal And behold whilst we thus talke and yearne after it we got some touch of it in a little measure with one whole spring and beat of the heart And we sighed See l. 7. c. 17. and left there the first fruits of the Spirit still fixed unto it and so our feebleness relapsed again to our former discourse and the exteriour noise of our mouth where the Wo d hath its beginning and hath its ending and what is there in it that bears any resemblance to thy Word which perpetually endures in it self without ever becoming old and by which all things are renewed And we said thus to one another If any soul could be stript and exempt from the impressions and enjoy a perfect * silence of the tumults of the flesh could enjoy * the silence of the images and appearances of all things of the earth and of the water and of the air * the silence of the heavens and * the silence of the soul it self to it self so that it could passe by it self without any thought of it self could enjoy the silence of dreams and all imaginary fancies the silence of every language and signe and of whatever hath its totall being only by a passing away of its parts if perhaps any soul can enjoy an Universal silence of them See l. 4. c. 10 11. because if any one will hearken to them in their passing by and away they all speak this to him We our selves have not made us but he made us who passeth not away but eternally remains But having only said this if now they become silent to us having directed our ears towards him that made them and so he alone should speak to us not by them but by himself that so we should hear his word not by a tongue of flesh nor by the voice of an Angel nor by the thunder of a cloud nor by
the Aenigma of a similitude but should hear * his own self the person whom we love in all these other things * his own self without these as but now for a start we enlarged our selves and with a swift thought touched that eternal wisdom above all permanent for ever if such a thing I say were continued unto us and all other sights so farr unlike and inferiour to it were quite removed and this one should totally ravish and ingulf and overwhelme the beholder with those interior joyes that so our life for ever should be such as that moment of intelligence was after which we so much languished and sighed would not this haply be that thing in the Gospell Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord Mat. 25.23 1 Cor. 15 51. And when shall this be shall it be when we all shall rise again But shall not we then be also all changed Such things at that time we discoursed together and if not altogether in this manner and in such words yet Lord thou knowest that upon that day we argued such like things and whilst amidst our talk this World with all the allurements and delights thereof appeared unto us vile and contemptible then she said unto me Son For my part I am no more taken at all with any thing in this life What I should more do here or why I am here I know not all my hopes in this world being now ended One thing there was for which sake I was earnest to stay a little longer in it that I might see you a Catholick Christian before I died and my God much more abundantly hath performed this unto me in that I see you also this worlds felicity despised his all-devoted Servant What make I here any longer CHAP. XI Her sickness Death careless of her funerall only desiring from them a remembrance of her at the Altar of the Lord. TO this what I answered her I do not well remember But scarce five dayes or little more had passed when she fell into a Fever and one day being very sick swooned away when her company was removed a little space from her who running to her she soon after recovered her senses and looking up upon me and my brother †Navigius See his book De vitâ beatâ standing by her said to us as one ignorant Where have I been Then beholding us all-amazed with grief she said Here ye shall interr your Mother I held my peace and refrained weeping But my brother let fall some word wherein he wished as a thing more happy that she might not die abroad but in her own Country which she hearing and with an offended countenance checking him with her eyes that he should yet relish such things then looking on me she said hear you what he saith and then to us both Lay this body any where let the care thereof nothing trouble you Only this I beg of you that ye make remembrance of me at the Lords Altar wheresoever ye be And when she had expressed to us this her mind with â—uch words as she could she said no more now strugling with the pains of her disease And I fell into a deep meditation on thy gifts O my God so invisible which thou sowest in the hearts of thy faithfull and which bring forth such admirable fruits and much rejoyced and gave thanks unto thee calling to mind what I knew formerly with what great care she had alwaies been perplexed concerning her place of buriall which she had provided and prepared for her self near the body of her husband For because they had ever lived very peaceably together she desired also as humane affections are lesse capable of Divine matters that this might be accumulated to their former felicity and might be commemorated by posterity that it was granted her after her crossing the sea and so long forreign travells to have the same tomb and earth to cover the united ashes of her and her husband And at what time that vanity out of the replenishing of thy goodnesse ceased to be in her heart I know not but I rejoyced and wondred at this new inclination which she now discovered Although by that discourse we formerly had at the window when she said What make I here any longer there appeared no desire in her to die in her own Country And I heard afterward that at Ostia in my absence my mother had with much confidence discoursed with some friends of mine concerning the contempt of this life and benefit of death And they admiring such courage in a woman which thou hadst bestowed on her and asking whether she feared not to leave her body so far from her own City Nothing said she is farr off from God neither need I fear that he should not know in the end of the world where to find that from whence to raise me again And so the ninth day of her sickness the fifty sixth year of her age and the thirty third of mine that religious and pious soul was dissolved from the body CHAP. XII S. Austin refraining from weeping though suffering much inward grief to which after her buriall he indulgeth some tears I Closed her eyes and great grief presently seized my heart and thence overflowed into tears but at the same time I forced my eyes by the overruling power of my soul to drink up again this their fountain even unto drynesse whilst this inward combat was no small pain unto me When also at her last breath my boy Adeodat burst out on crying we all chiding him for it he forbare in the same manner as also omething childish in me tended to weeping but checked by a more manly voice of my heart was stilled again For we did not think it decent to celebrate that funeral with lamentations and complaints because these for the most part are used to deplore some misery of the dead or rather their extinction But neither miserably did she die nor die at all This was assured unto us both from the purity of her manners from the sincerity of her faith and from other reasons indubitable What was it therefore that within so much pained me but a fresh wound given me from the custom of our conversation together so sweet and so dear to me now suddenly broken off I confesse I took some solace in that testimony of hers in her last sicknesse when speaking-fair my then-services towards her she called me her Dutifull Son and related with much tendernesse of affection that She never once heard fall from my lips a harsh or contumelious speech toward her But alas O my God who madest us both what comparison could there be between such honour from me given to her and her great services done to me And therefore now left destitute of her so great a solace my soul was deeply wounded and that life rent asunder which was now made up all one of mine and hers The boy stilled from crying Euodius took up a Psalter and began to
innermost part of my soul and * to I know not what sweetness which were it once perfected in me I know not what blisse that is which such a life would not enjoy But then with certain cumbersome weights hanging upon me I presently am pressed down again to these things below and am re-ingulfed and detained by former custom and much I bewail my self and yet much still I am detained so greatly hath the burden of a bad custome overloaded me And in this estate I can abide still but would not and in the other I would willingly abide but cannot both wayes very miserable CHAP. XLI ANd in this condition I proceeded to consider the remaining languors of my sins in a threefold concupiscence and have invoked the help of thy right hand to deliver me For I beheld thy brightness with a sick and wounded spirit and beaten back and dazled by it I said who can ever attain thither I am utterly cast away from the sight of thine eyes Thou art the truth who presidest above all things And I out of my covetousness was not willing to loose thee but yet greedily desired also to possess what was a lie together with thee as no man desireth so to speak lies as to be ignorant what is truth and therefore I lost thee because thou vouchsafest not to be enjoyed together with a lie CHAP. XLII His recourse for a remedy to all these his maladies not * to evil Angels or Demons with the Platonists or others practising evil Arts as Mediatours between God and man because sinners like men spirits like God ANd now whom could I find who might reconcile and reduce me unto thee Was that office to be undertaken by some Angel for me upon what devotions upon what sacraments performed unto him Many endeavouring to return unto thee and of themselves unable as I hear have attempted such wayes and fallen into the desire of curious visions and so deserved to be exposed to many delusions For being high-minded they sought thee with the pride of learning exalting rather than beating their swollen breasts and so have allured unto rhem from the likeness of their affections spirits associated with them in pride Eph. 2 2. the powers of this air by whom through magical operations they might be deceived whilst they were seeking a Mediatour by whom they might be purged But it was none such they light on 2 Cor. 11 14 but the Devil it was transforming himself as an Angel of light And this much allured proud flesh to repair unto him because he had no body of flesh For they were mortals and sinners and thou O Lord with whom they sought reconciliation wert sinless and immmortal Now the mediating Person between God and men it was meet he should have something like to God something like to men lest in both like to men he should be at too great a distance from God or in both like to God he should stand too remote from men Therefore also this conterfeit Mediatour by whom according to thy secret judgement our pride deserves to be deluded had one thing common with men that is sin and would seem to have the other thing common with God whilst not cloathed with the mortality of flesh he vaunts himself as immortal Rom. 6.23 But since the certain wages of sin is death and this sin he hath common with man he hath also that common with man to be sentenced unto death CHAP. XLIII But * to Christ who is the only true Mediatour mortal like man righteous like God through whom else desperate he confidently hopes a perfect cure of all his diseases BUt the true Mediatour whom in thy secret mercy thou hast manifested to the humble and hast also sent him amongst them 1. Tim. 2.5 that they might by his example learn humility that Mediatour of God and men the man Christ Jesus between these mortal sinners and the immortal righteous one hath appeared mortal together with men righteous together with God that because the wages of righteousness is life and peace he by his righteousness which was allied to God might evacuate death to justified sinners which death he was pleased to have common with men And this true Mediatour was also made known to the Saints of old that they by the faith of his passion to come as we by the faith of it past might attain salvation And it was as he was man that he was Mediatour but as he was the Word so he was no midling person because equall to God and God with God and Phil. 2.6 Joh. 1.1 together with the Holy Spirit one God How far hast thou loved us O thou good Father who sparedst not thine only Son but deliveredst him up for us ungodly How far hast thou loved us for whom he Rom. 8.52 Phil. 2.6 8. who thought it no robbery to be equal to thee was made subject even to death even to the death of the cross only he free amongst the dead having power to lay down his life John 10.18 and power likewise to take it up again becoming unto thee for us both a Victor and a Victim and therefore a Victor because he had been a Victim becoming unto thee for us both the Priest and the Sacrifice and therefore the Priest because a Sacrifice making us unto thee of Servants Sons by being born thy Son and becoming our Servant And therefore do I justly repose strong hope in him that thou wilt heal all my diseases by him who sitteth at thy right hand and intercedeth unto thee for us Else should I despair for many and great are these my diseases many and great they are but greater is the cure which thou hast provided And well might we have imagined thy Word to have been too remote from having any alliance with us and so have despaired of our selves had it not thus been made flesh and dwelt amongst us Affrighted with these my sins and with the load of my misery I had once a thought and a design of retiring my self into some desert solitude but thou didst prohibit it unto me and confirmedst me saying That therefore Christ died for all 2 Cor. 5.15 that they who live should not henceforth live unto themselves but unto him who died for them Behold O Lord I cast all my care upon thee let me live and I will consider the wonderful things of thy law Psal 119.18 Thou knowest my ignorance my infirmities Teach me Heal me He thy only One in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge redeemed me with his own blood Let not the proud my spiritual enemies falsly accuse me For I meditate on this my ransom Col. 2.3 and I eat it and drink it and communicate it to others and being poor I desire to be satisfied therewith amongst those who eat and are satisfied and they shall praise the Lord that seek him CHAP. XLIV The end and purpose of these his Confessions O Lord since thou art eternally art thou ignorant o these things I now say unto thee or seest thou no till a certain time what is done in time Why then have I ordered a narration of so many several matters unto thee Surely not that thou shouldest learn such things from me but only that I might the more excite my affection and love towards thee and theirs also who reaâ— these things that we may all say together Magnus Dominus lauâ—abilis valde Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised I have already said it and let me say it again Out of my love of thy love to me it is that I do this As also we continue to pray nevertheless that the truth hath said Your heavenly Father knoweth what things yâ— have need of before ye ask him Mat. 6.8 We only publish the affections we have towards thee while we confess to theâ— our miseries and thy mercies that thou mayest compleaâ— our freedom as thou hast already begun it and that a length we may perfectly cease to be miserable in our selves and may arrive to beatitude in thee because thoâ— hast graciously called us that we should be poor in spirit and meek and mournful and hungry and thirsty after righteousness and merciful and pure in heart and peace makers See I have rehearsed before thee a many things such as I had ability and such as I had also a will to relate because thou first hadst so willed that I should confess unto thee Psal 118.1 the Lord my God Because that Thou arâ— good and thy mercy endureth for ever FINIS